Asimov's Science Fiction

April/May 2011

Editor:

Sheila Williams

Issue:

Volume 35, No. 4 & 5

ISSN:

1065-2698

Pages:

192

Williams's editorial this issue is about the tendency of SF to take a
rose-colored view of the world, which on the surface seems odd given the
tendency of recent SF towards dystopia. But she makes a good point that
the portrayal of the past is rose-colored, linking that into the current
steampunk trend. She doesn't take the argument quite as far as I'd like,
but I'm glad to see editorials raising points like this. I'm inclined to
think that a lot of the rose-colored frame of the past is because few of
us want to read about real historic conditions at any length, even for
edification, because the stench and discomfort isn't fun to read about.

Silverberg's column is another discussion of programmatic plot generators,
which mostly makes the point that plot ideas are the easy part of writing.
James Gunn contributes an extended biography of Isaac Asimov that probably
won't be new to long-time genre readers but may fill in some details
(although it politely sticks to mostly flattering material). Spinrad's
book review column is one of his better ones; it looks at two novels by
China Miéville and two by Ian McDonald and explores differences in
world-building. Spinrad predictably makes the case in favor of science
fiction with rules and against the New Weird, but the discussion along the
way was worth reading.

"The Day the Wires Came Down" by Alexander Jablokov: Speaking
of steampunk, here's an example. There is even an airship, although the
primary technological focus is suspended street cars. Jablokov postulates
a city-wide transportation network of suspended carriages called telpher
cars, along with a city built around the telpher cables: stores on roofs,
windows displaying merchandise to passing cars, and even a history of
heated competition and dirty tricks between competing telpher networks.
The story is set, as the title would indicate, on the last day of the
network. It's being shut down for cost, with some hints that progress is
destroying something precious.

There is a plot here, revolving around some mysteries of the history of
the telpher network and the roles of several people in that history. But
the story is primarily a celebration of old technology. It's a rail fan's
story recast with a steampunk technology, featuring the same mix of
fascination with mechanics and a sense that the intricate details are
falling out of common knowledge (and perhaps usefulness). As a story,
it's a bit slow-moving, but I enjoyed the elegiac tone. (7)

"An Empty House with Many Doors" by Michael Swanwick: This is a
very short story, more of an emotional profile, involving a man's reaction
to the death of his wife. Oh, and parallel universes. It's sort of the
inverse of Niven's classic "All the Myriad Ways." Similar to Niven's
story, I found the idea vaguely interesting but the conclusion and
emotional reaction unbelievable and alien. (5)

"The Homecoming" by Mike Resnick: Resnick tends to yank on the
heart-strings rather sharply in his stories, so I knew roughly what to
expect when a father comes home to find his son is visiting. A son who,
rather against his father's wishes, has been significantly altered to be
able to live with aliens. Throw in a mother with serious dementia, and
you can probably predict what Resnick does with this. Still, most of the
story is a two-sided conversation, and I thought he succeeded in doing
justice to both sides, even though one of them was destined to lose. (6)

"North Shore Friday" by Nick Mamatas: Illegal Greek immigrants,
a family-run system for getting them married off before the INS catch
them, government psi probes and eavesdropping on thoughts, joint projects
between computer and religion departments, secret government experiments,
and even ghosts... this story is a complex mess, with numerous thoughts
stuck into small boxes and scattered through the surface story. It's one
of those stories where figuring out what's going on, and even how to read
the story in a sensible way, is much of the fun. If you find that fun,
that is; if not, it will probably be frustrating. I wished there was a
bit more plot, but there's something delightful about how much stuff
Mamatas packs into it. (6)

"Clockworks" by William Preston: This is a prequel to Preston's
earlier "Helping Them Take the Old Man
Down". Like that story, it's primarily a pulp adventure, but layered
with another level of analysis and thoughtfulness that tries to embed the
pulp adventure in our understanding of human behavior and the nature of
the world, although this one stays a bit more pulp than its predecessor.
As with Preston's other story, we don't get directly in the head of the
Old Man (here, just called the man, but identifiable from clues in both
stories as Doc Savage); instead, the protagonist is a former villain named
Simon Lukic who the man hopes to have fixed by operating on his brain.
The undercurrent that lies beneath a more typical pulp adventure is the
question of whether Lukic is actually healed. I think there was a bit too
much daring-do and human perfection, but it's a perfectly servicable pulp
story with some depth. (6)

"The Fnoor Hen" by Rudy Rucker: If you've read any of Rucker's
work before, you probably know what to expect: a mind-boggling blizzard of
mathematically-inspired technobabble that turns into vaguely coherent
surrealism. (You can probably tell that I'm not much of a fan, although
the clear good humor in these stories makes it hard to dislike them too
much.) There's a mutated chicken and some sort of alternate mathematical
space and then something that seems like magic... I'd be lying if I said
that I followed this story. If you like Rucker, this seems like the sort
of thing that you'd like. (4)

"Smoke City" by Christopher Barzak: At the start of this story,
I thought it was going to be an emotional parable about immigration. The
progatonist lives two lives: one in our world, and one in the Smoke City
of industry, a world of hard labor, pollution, and little reward, with
families in both. But nearly all of the story is set within Smoke City,
and the parable turns out to be a caustic indictment of industry and its
exploitation of labor. I kind of wish Barzak hadn't used rape as a
metaphor, but when the captains of industry show up, I can't argue with
how deeply and accurately the story shoves in the knife. There isn't much
subtlety here, but it's still one of the better stories in this issue.
(7)

"A Response from EST17" by Tom Purdom: I'm very happy to see
Purdom's writing appearing regularly. His stories are always quiet and
matter-of-fact, and at first seem to miss emotional zest, but they almost
always grow on me. He lets the reader fill in their own emotional
reactions to events, and there's always a lot going on.

This story is a first-contact story, except that the "humans" here are not
human at all. They're automated probes sent by two separate human
civilizations, with different programming and different governance
algorithms, and they quickly start competing negotiations. The aliens
they've discovered similarly have factions, who start talking to the
different probes in an elaborate dance of gathering information without
giving too much away. The twist is that this pattern has replayed itself
many times in the past, and information itself can be a weapon. I enjoyed
this one from start to finish. (7)

"The One That Got Away" by Esther M. Friesner: Friesner is best
known, at least to me, for humorous fantasy, and this story is advertised
as such from early on. The first-person protagonist is a prostitute in a
seaside town. She's bemused to finally be invited over by a sailor who's
been eyeing her all evening, but that sailor has something else in mind
than normal business. For much of this story, the fantasy element is
unclear; when it finally comes, it was an amusing twist. (7)

"The Flow and Dream" by Jack Skillingstead: This is a mildly
interesting variation on the old SF story of hibernating humans (on a
generation ship or elsewhere) waking up to a transformed world. Here,
it's not a ship, it's a planet, and the hiberation was to wait for
terraforming rather than for transit. The twist comes from an excessively
literal computer and the fun of putting together the pieces. Sadly, the
story trails off at the end without much new to say. (5)

"Becalmed" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: "Becalmed" takes place
immediately before "Becoming One with the
Ghosts" and explains the incident that created the situation explored in
that story. The first-person protagonist of "Becalmed" is a linguist, an
expert in learning alien languages so that the Fleet can understand the
civilizations that it runs across. But something went horribly wrong at
their last stop, something that she's largely suppressed, and now she's
confined to quarters and possibly in deep trouble. As is the ship;
they're in foldspace, and they have been for days.

"Becalmed" is structed like a mystery, centered around recovering the
protagonist's memories. It's also a bit of a legal procedural; the ship
is trying to determine what to do with her and to what degree she's
responsible. But the heart of the story is a linguistic and cultural
puzzle.

This is another great SF story from Rusch, whose name on a cover will make
me eager to start reading a new magazine. I love both angles on the
universe she's built, but I think I like the Fleet even better than the
divers. The Fleet captures some of the magic of the original Star
Trek, but with much more mature characters, more believable situations,
and a more sensible and nuanced version of the Prime Directive. Rusch
writes substantial, interesting plots that hold my interest. I'd love to
see more like this. (8)